Principles Of Political Economy
- Автор: Mill John Stuart
- Год: 2022
- Язык: английский
- Год: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
- Жанр: Политика
Электронная книга - «Principles Of Political Economy». Краткое содержание книги:
Beside discussing descriptive issues such as which nations tended to benefit more in a system of trade based on comparative advantage (Mill's answer: those with more elastic demands for other countries' goods), the work also discussed normative issues such as ideal systems of political economy, critiquing proposed systems such as communism and socialism.
Along with A System of Logic, Principles of Political Economy established Mill's reputation as a leading public intellectual. Mill's sympathetic attitude in this work and in other essays toward contemporary socialism, particularly Fourierism, earned him esteem from the working class as one of their intellectual champions.
Of this number, 5,333,991 came from the British Isles, of which 3,367,624 were Irish.
There came 3,860,624 Germans, 593,021 Scandinavians, and 334,064 French. (See United States “Statistical Abstract,” 1878, 1880, 1883.)
The causes operating on this movement of men—a movement unequaled in history—are undoubtedly economic. Like the migration of the early Teutonic races from the Baltic to Southern Europe, it is due to the pressure of numbers on subsistence.
A still more interesting study is that of the causes which attempt to explain the direction of this stream after it has reached our shores. It is a definite fact that the old slave States have hitherto received practically none of this vast foreign immigration.[144] The actual distribution of the foreign born in the United States is to be seen in a most interesting way by aid of the colored map, Chart No. VIII, giving the different densities of foreign-born population in different parts of the Union. It seems almost certain that the general belief hitherto in the insecurity of life and property in the old slave States has worked against the material prosperity of that section.
The different ages of the native- and foreign-born inhabitants of the United States may be seen from the accompanying diagrams[145] comparing the aggregate population of the United States with the foreign-born. This may profitably be compared with a similar diagram relating to the Chinese in the United States (Book II, Chap. III, § 3).
Aggregate: 1870. The figures give the number of thousands of each sex.
Decade of Life. Males. Females. 1 136 132 2 115 114 3 87 90 4 62 63 5 47 44 6 31 27 7 17 15 8 7 7 9 2 2Foreign: 1870.
Decade of Life. Males. Females. 1 24 23 2 48 49 3 128 114 4 134 113 5 107 84 6 60 44 7 27 23 8 9 9 9 2 2Book II. Distribution.
Chapter I. Of Property.
§ 1. Individual Property and its opponents.
The laws and conditions of the Production of Wealth partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary in them. It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like. They can place them at the disposal of whomsoever they please, and on whatever terms. The Distribution of Wealth depends on the laws and customs of society. The rules by which it is determined are what the opinions and feelings of the ruling portion of the community make them, and are very different in different ages and countries; and might be still more different, if mankind so chose. We have here to consider, not the causes, but the consequences, of the rules according to which wealth may be distributed. Those, at least, are as little arbitrary, and have as much the character of physical laws, as the laws of production.
We proceed, then, to the consideration of the different modes of distributing the produce of land and labor, which have been adopted in practice, or may be conceived in theory. Among these, our attention is first claimed by that primary and fundamental institution, on which, unless in some exceptional and very limited cases, the economical arrangements of society have always rested, though in its secondary features it has varied, and is liable to vary. I mean, of course, the institution of individual property.
Private property, as an institution, did not owe its origin to any of those considerations of utility which plead for the maintenance of it when established. Enough is known of rude ages, both from history and from analogous states of society in our own time, to show that tribunals (which always precede laws) were originally established, not to determine rights, but to repress violence and terminate quarrels. With this object chiefly in view, they naturally enough gave legal effect to first occupancy, by treating as the aggressor the person who first commenced violence, by turning, or attempting to turn, another out of possession.
144
See article “Colonization,” “International Review,” 1881, p. 88.
145
See F. A. Walker's “Statistical Atlas.”